


Domicile

by ScotlandEvander



Series: Don't Ever Change [14]
Category: Actor RPF, Benedict Cumberbatch Fandom, British Actor RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Angst, Business Venture, F/M, Fluff, Home, Ice Cream, Memory Lane, POV Alternating, POV First Person, POV Male Character, POV Multiple, Past, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 17:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScotlandEvander/pseuds/ScotlandEvander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This is not your bedroom,” I say, eyeing the flower patterned wallpaper and boarder. Oh, look, there’s white and pink stripes behind the door. And flowered cut-outs near the light switch. </p><p>Dear Lord.</p><p>“Uh, yeah. It is. I reclaimed it!” Door shouts from behind me, pumping her fist into the air. “Davy took it over after I moved out, but I took back the man cave!”</p><p>“He had a pink man cave?” I faintly ask.</p><p>The room is alarmingly girly. I cannot see it being a man cave at all (even with the oversized telly, state of the art sound system and rather fancy looking futon that reside in the room). </p><p>“Yeah, complete with a pirate flag,” she snickers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Domicile

_A/N: “Loser” was written by Beck and Carl Stephenson. “Deep Inside of You” was written by Stephen Jenkins._

_19 July 2013 - While I’m not totally pleased with this, I think it gets what I wanted across and since today is Ben’s actual birthday, I just had to post this Ben/Door story. Enjoy!_

OoOoOoOoO

_Benedict_

**Finding Home**

**9 June 2013**

**I’ve always been a homebody, a well dressed hermit who’d rather curl into a ball on the couch and watch _Doctor Who_ (or a Tom Hiddleston flick) than go out and do anything. When I was about twenty, I realized that as long as I had a “home” it didn’t matter where I was located. Home could be a dorm, a hotel room, a vacation retreat, a friend’s home or my parent’s abode. As long as there was somewhere within a dwelling I could call my own, I’d be hunkydory. **

**Then I fell in love and no where felt like home.**

**I fell in love in London (duh, where else would I fall in love for the first time?) and when I landed at O’Hare after a year away from Chicagoland, from my parents, from the familial home I felt nothing.**

**I landed at O’Hare and felt utterly and completely vacuous.**

**Yeah, I was delighted to see my family. Yeah, I was elated to sleep in my own bed again. Sure, it was nice to see the wide array of clothes I’d left behind. And yet, nothing felt…right.**

**Everything was fallacious.**

**I went back to college for my senior year and felt as if I was walking through a waking dream. I felt allochthonous— like I’d taken the wrong plane and landed on Clom.**

**It took me a long time to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. Then— randomly because if it wasn’t random, then it would never have happened—  I realized the problem.**

**I was homeless. Home is not a place, not just people. It’s a feeling and I’d lost it.**

**So, what did I do?**

**I hopped on a plane and flew off to LA.**

**Yeah…it made sense at the time.**

**I spent two weeks in LA visiting a friend of mine and came home. Upon landing, O’Hare felt kinda like home. O’Hare always caused a certain reaction within upon landing after a trip— the only time it did not was after my return from London.**

**But, after my visit to LA, I felt that familiar jump in my stomach and relief of being _home_. **

**I was home.**

**Why am I writing about this now?**

**Mostly because I have to go to the airport (also because I am random). Partly because…the last time I landed at O’Hare it didn’t feel like _home_ (but also to be random, do not forget that I am random, hear me roar randomly). There was something amiss. Okay, there were a lot of things amiss, but I didn’t feel the relief of coming home when the wheels hitting the tarmac. I stared around at the familiar surroundings and felt lost at sea. **

**I assumed it was due to all the strife in my life, but I know myself better now than I knew myself at twenty-one. If I knew then what I know now, I doubt I’d spent over eight months trying to figure out what was wrong. Instead, I spent roughly a week. (See, improvement!)**

**I’m homeless.**

**Not in the sense I lack a physical home. No, I got one of those. (I’m in it right now!) I lack that feeling home, the feeling of belonging somewhere. Yeah, it’s nice to go home to your folks house, the one where beat up your brother, tried to paint your pink wallpaper yellow, hung upside down wondering what life would be like living on the ceiling…it’s nice to go home. But, you know how they say once you leave home you can’t go back?**

**You can’t. Once you loose your home, you can’t go back. You gotta find a new one.**

***Mood* Introspective**

***Music* “Motorcycle Drive By” by Third Eye Blind**

I shut the laptop and stare out the window blankly. The flight attendant pops up, instructing me all to put away my belongings and prepare for landing. Sliding the laptop into my new bag (Benedict & Door design), I stow it under the seat and lean back, mulling over Door’s latest blog entry. She made it in the dead of night— likely around the time I was getting on the plane to head to O’Hare. 

Closing my eyes as the plane lowers itself closer to the ground, I remind myself of all the reason I cannot be home for Door.

She’s not getting a divorce. 

She’s not in any shape for anything other than a friend.

I know she never wrote it out clearly in that blog, but to Door, “home” is people. It’s not a physical place, it’s a feeling invoked by the people she surrounds herself with. 

I am not home. 

 _You’re an imbecile, Benedict_ , I hear my mother’s voice chide in my head. 

Mum has told me on more than one occasion I’m an idiot (for a wide array of reasons). Granted, she always tries to use a polite word to tell me I’m being stupid in her eyes. She’s yet to tell me I’m an idiot when it comes to Door (other than making friends with a married bird (she insists on using that word) when I ought to be finding a woman to marry and produce grandkids), but I know if she _knew_ the whole story, Mum would likely grab my ear and tug hard so she could tell me into my ear I’m a moron. 

I am a moron. 

I cannot let this…no. If I refuse to put any thought, words, or anything it will go away.

I’m a twit. 

I rub my face with both hands as the plane touches down, bumping along the tarmac. I look out the window, taking in the scene Door sees in each time she lands at this airport. 

My heart is beating like crazy, my stomach coils warmly and I’m antsy to get off the plane. I feel warm and welcome the fact that while I’d never admit it, I feel something akin to the relief I usually feel in coming back to London after being away for a long while. 

I’m not going to call it a feeling a _home_ , but it is close. 

It is excitement, it is anticipation and it’s…something I cannot and will not name. 

Mostly, it’s…I want off this damn plane. 

* * *

I make it through customs and enter the waiting room for the international flights. It’s a room filled with people and reminds me of the end scene of _Love Actually_. I look around for the over abundance of ginger hair I’ve come to associate with Door. 

I cannot find anyone sporting out of control ginger hair. 

“Grasshopper!”

What the…?

I turn in the direction of the voice only to be almost bowled over by someone who has dark, straight hair. I stumble backwards, yet remain upright as the person hugs me. I feel a minor well of alarm till the person pulls away and I see Door beaming up at me.  

“Long time no see, huh?”

I stare at her blankly.

“What did you do to your hair?” I faintly ask, staring at the extremely straight hair that is the wrong color. 

Door takes a few steps back and picks up the ends of her hair (which is extremely long now that  it’s been flattened out). She studies it for a moment before speaking again. “You don’t like it?”

She sounds unsure and a little hurt. 

Oops.

“No! No! It’s not that. Er, no, em, it’s just, well, uh, different. What prompted the change?”

Door never does anything with her hair— passed pulling it back in a haphazard ponytail. (Well, except the time she crashed the press junket, but that doesn’t count.) Now, her hair is a rich chestnut color and under strict control. It’s no longer the ginger mess I’ve come to adore. Without thinking I reach up and take the strands of hair Door’s holding, rubbing the hair between my fingers. Last time I touched her hair it was textured from the way it naturally curled, yet still touchable. 

Still hair-like in texture, but totally different from what it was the last time I saw her. It’s silky, smooth, and alien. 

“So?”

“It suits you,” I hear myself saying, even though there’s a bit of me that doesn’t agree with what I’ve just said. “Quite nice.”

“Quite nice,” she echos in her attempt at a posh accent. (It’s a fairly bad attempt at a British accent and comes out sounding like the voice she uses when she’s talking for Basil— who for unknown reasons is a French spy as of late.) 

I give her the stink eye, dropping her hair. I take a few steps back to put a respectable distance between us, as we’re standing unnaturally close for public. 

“No mocking the British, Ms Judoc,” I chide.   

“Ah, but, I do not mock, I praise,” she says dramatically, blowing her fringe out of her eyes. She drops the accent as she adds, “I don’t know how I feel about the bangs.”

I gape at her, realizing she’d got thick fringe now. How’d I miss that before?

“I like it,” I say, meaning it. I’ve always liked fringe on girls. 

She smiles, hooking her arm through mine. “You pack light.”

“Side effect of being an actor.”

She quirks an eyebrow.

“Okay, that’s not true. I’ve always been a light packer,” I amend.

“I know, you wear the same three shirts,” Door jokes, steering me towards the exit (hopefully). “So, we’ve got the rest of today free, but tomorrow starts the business meetings. I’ve been warned there is a lot of paperwork in our near future, Mr Grasshopper.”

“Grasshopper?”

“You’re tall,” is all she says as way of explanation.

“It has nothing to do with the fact you go by Cricket?”

The face she makes is hilarious. “Of course not.”

“Uh huh,” I laugh, drawing her closer to me as we head for the door. 

We walk outside and are greeted by rather mild temperatures for Chicago in June (if going by how many people are commenting on how cold it is for Chicago in the summer). I was worried I’d be over dressed in jeans and a my favorite button down, but it’s actually quite cool as we head across the road towards the parking garage. 

“I love it here,” Door says out of nowhere as she leads me through the parking garage.

“You love car parks?”

“No! This kind of weather! It was horrible for awhile there, but the last few days have been utterly perfect compared to what I’ve gotten used to in Texas. God, I hate Texas.”

I snicker. “Yes, I remember you mentioning that.”

Door beams up at me. 

God, she’s got to stop smiling at me. 

OoOoOoOoO

* * *

 OoOoOoOoO

_Dorothea_

My mom love Ben. I’m pretty sure if she wasn’t married to my father, she’d marry Ben on the spot. Hell, she might dump my father’s butt and run off with Ben. 

It’s kind of embarrassing how she’s fawning over him as he sits at the bar in my parent’s house— my current home till I stop being a loser twenty something (I’m not thirty till October, no matter what Tom says. Tom Hiddleston keeps rounding my age up. I am twenty-nine, not thirty. Thirty is OLD. Does the man know nothing? Never make a woman older than she is.)

“So, you’re on break, then? No idea when _Sherlock_ will air?”

“No, sorry,” Ben says likely for the millionth time. “We won’t know the air date till after we finish filming likely.”

My mom looks crushed. 

“Well, at least she knows when that movie with the other guy stars in is coming out. What’s his name again? Dom Hoddleson?”

“What?” I shirked. “How long have you known me?”

Mom gives me an infuriating smile and says, “Oh, I don’t know. Do I know you?”

I let out a frustrated noise and stomp out of the kitchen. I don’t know where I’m going. I shouldn’t leave my mother alone with Ben. She’ll likely either embarrass herself— or more likely me. She KNOWS me and knows all the embarrassing factoids of my life. OMG. What if she tells Ben about how I was born with a cone head? Seriously, my head was pointy. It fixed itself, but it’s still embarassing for your mother to tell people you were born with a pointy head.

She always does this with guys I bring home.

Whoa.

That sounded wrong.

I didn’t bring Ben home to meet my parents. I only brought him here because I’m a loser who has no where to live other than her parent’s house. 

Oh, god. 

_I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?_

Oh, stop singing in your head and go save Ben. I turn tail, heading through the living room and dinning room to enter the kitchen through a difference entrance point from where I departed. (I left through the exit that goes into the front hall, then walked around through the living and dining room to sneak up on Ben, as his back is to me where he’s seated at the bar in the kitchen.) 

“BEN!” I shout, leaping into the kitchen, wearing a huge grin as both Ben and my mom jump. “Let’s leave Mom to do whatever she does when she’s at home and go…”

I trail off, loosing steam.

Where the hell do you take Benedict Cumberbatch in Villa Park?

Hell, where the frack do you take Benedict Cumberbatch in DuPage County?

* * *

You take him to the mall.

Yeah. The mall. 

“I’m a schmendrick,” I mutter, banging my head on the table in the food court.

“Bless you,” Ben says like I just sneezed. 

“Loser! I’m a looooooooser!”

“Oh, I don’t believe that,” Ben politely says around the spoon in his mouth. “I quite like this.”

“It’s Dairy Queen.”

“It’s good. I’ve never had it,” he explains.

I lift my head and stare at him.

“Seriously!? Why didn’t you say so! I could have taken you to the famous one! The original one with the sign and fame and in downtown Lombard! The one that closes on the hottest day in September and opens on the coldest day in March!”

I flop my head back on the table.

“Somebody shoot me,” I mumble. 

If someone had told me one day I’d be brining BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH to Yorktown to feed him Dairy Queen of all things, I’d laughed in your face.

So, not laughing now. 

“Well, I’ll be here for a week,” Ben says. The spoon scrapes the bottom of the plastic cup he’s eating out of. “We can go to this famous one another afternoon.”

I make a noise. I can’t even form words.

I’m at a mall. I **_hate_** malls. I hated malls when I was in HIGH SCHOOL. Especially YORKTOWN. It was so lame compared to Woodfield. Or Oakbrook.

I should have taken Ben to OAKBROOK. I live CLOSER to Oakbrook. 

God, I am a failure at life.  

“So, is this where you hung out as a teenager?” Ben asks. The plastic spoon scours the bottom of the cup. 

“No. Not really. Well, sometimes. Only under duress. Then again, there’s not much to do around here, hence why we’re here.”

We’ve been here for what feels like several lifetimes. No one has realized Benedict Cumberbatch is at the mall (that I know of as no one has approached us). I figured he’d be accosted rather quickly due to the fact he’s got Sherlock hair. I don’t know what is throwing people off. The shirt he’s wearing must be his all time favorite shirt, as I’ve seen him pictured in it enough to realize he wears it often.

I love it when famous people repeat clothing. (I so want Tom to wear his TARDIS suit again.)  

I lift my head up and open my mouth to suggest we flee when I hear someone ask, “Is that you Dizzy?”

No one calls me Dizzy. 

Well, okay, at one point in my life people called me Dizzy, but I don’t associate with those people any longer. (D for Dorothea and Z for that god awful middle name my mother stuck me with. DZ, Dizzy, get it? Yeah, I thought it was lame as well, but it stuck when I was in high school because I had this one friend who ALWAYS called me Dizzy. We are no longer friends.)

I turn my head to the left and find someone who I think I ought to know standing next to the table, looking at me in an expectant manner. 

God, I knew I shouldn’t have died my hair dark again. (I had dark hair in high school because I hated being a redhead. In college, I went blond. I can’t remember when I embraced the ginger mess I was gifted by nature. Likely when I was in Del Rio and lacked an Aveda salon. I am a brat and will only use Aveda salons to color my hair. And cut it. I didn’t get a hair cut for over a year when I lived in Del Rio. I didn’t bother with the color in Anchorage because I fainted when I saw how much it’d cost to dye it anything, so I just had them chop it off. My mom paid for me to have my hair done last week. Likely out of pity, as I am pitiful lately.) 

“Er,” I trail off, staring at the person. 

“It _is_ you!” the person exclaims, leering at me.  

I give the person a vague smile.

I feel like I ought to know that leer. She looks…please dear god no.

“It’s Miranda!” 

No way.

“Oh!” I say, sitting up a bit straighter. 

This is the person who started the whole let’s call Door _Dizzy_ because it’s totally cute! As I stated before, we are not friends. (And not in the manner I am sometimes not friends with Basil the Barking Menace. Miranda and I are not friends in the manner we will never be friends again because I cannot stand her.) Miranda and I had a major fall out right before graduation. (Over a boy, what else do girls fight over?) (I am being sarcastic. Girls fight over a wide array of things.)

I’m pretty sure I once told someone if I never saw her again, I’d be grrrrrr-ATE.

This is so not the time to run in with someone whose last words to you were, “I hope he breaks your heart.” 

He didn’t, by the way. I broke his. Because that’s what I did till I got my heart broken.

Now, I’m just a washout.

“Hi,” I offer. 

“Cricket?” Ben inquires politely.

I look at Ben and blink. Why did he just call me Cricket? 

“Oh, who is this?” Miranda asks, looking snide. 

I stare at her for a long beat, then look back at Ben. 

I doubt Miranda has a clue who he is, nor would she find him attractive. I find him good looking, so she wouldn’t. Miranda doesn’t like the guys I like. We’ve NEVER thought the same guys were cute. This was always nice because we never had crushes on the same guys in high school. She liked guys I thought were fugly and I liked guys she couldn’t understand why I wanted to even look at them. 

Odd that our last and final fight was about a boy— who I was dating. (It was a BAD relationship, and I guess she was right. He was controlling my life, but she went about showing me all wrong. She picked fights with me and then gave me an ultimatum. Her or him.)

“He’s Ben,” I announce, pointing at him. “He’s from London.”

Miranda gives me a knowing look and clicks her tongue.

Oh god, I can’t believe she still does that.

“I guess you did it in the end, huh?” she says in a strange tone. That annoying smug, snide, greater than thou expression appears on her face. “Moved off to London, then? I thought you’d married some guy in the military?”

I’m not surprised she knows that bit of information. Miranda always knew everything about everyone— even people she had no right to know anything about. 

“Do you see a ring?” I ask, mostly to piss her off about having her information wrong. 

It backfires. 

She stares at my hand, smirking. It’s clear a ring did live on that finger from the way it’s deformed where my ring used to sit. She brings her left hand up in front of her and fondles the ring she’s wearing. 

Bit-ka. (A curse I invented, BTW. Well, kind of. It was inspired by Xander Harris’ fail at spelling in one episode of _Buffy_.)

“Darling,” Ben cuts in, looking at his cell phone. “We’re going to late for our appointment.”

Huh?

Ben stands up, pushing in his chair and gathering his trash. Holding it in one large hand, he offers the other one to Miranda.

“It was lovely to meet an old acquaintance of Cricket’s. Sorry we couldn’t stay and chat,” Ben smoothly says, oozing charm. He gives a smoldering smile to Miranda, rendering her speechless. 

I blink at him.

Who the hell is this man and what did he do with Ben?

Ben is all self-conscious, maladroit charm and dorkiness rolled into a gawky, yet adorable shell. 

He’s not smooth. 

He’s not dripping sex like he’s now.

Mirada says nothing, nor does she move to take his hand. She gawks, mouth hanging slightly open and eyes wide. 

Ben is so getting an award. That woman has not changed since high school (except physically, as we all do) and she NEVER shuts up. She can talk for five hours straight and never take a break. (I know. I had a phone to my ear for five hours and said nothing. My dad thought I was just holding the phone to my ear to be strange.) 

Ben drops his hand as if it wasn’t awkwardly hanging in the air over the table and pulls my chair out from the table. 

“Uh, bye,” I say quickly, acting like a spaz to get out of the chair. Ben swoops in and saves me, putting an arm around my waist and literally carries me out of the food court. He smoothly tosses the trash out and heads for the escalator. Ben tightens his grip as we head down, looking around cooly as if he’s playing— 

Oh. Ben’s gone into actor mode. 

I’ve got Actor Benedict Cumberbatch next to me and he’s seriously playing some sort of role. I wonder who he’s channeling? 

“Thanks,” I mumble as we hit the ground floor. “I guess it was obvious we didn’t part on good terms.”

I wait for Ben to let go of me, but he doesn’t. He moves forward, steering me more than carrying me now that I seem to be able to use my feet. 

“I did pick up on that,” he says, smiling. My Ben brakes through the facade of the character. “You’ve never mentioned her before, so either it was horrid or no longer important. From her smug expression, she’s heard about your failed marriage and wanted to rub it in your face that you’re a failure at life, to utilize a phrase I’ve heard you use much too often as of late. While I doubt she realized who I was, which was fine, I figured since I’m not a complete waste, do a little acting.”

“I love you,” I mutter as we exit the mall. I take note of where we’ve absquatulated. “Wait, no. I’ve changed my mind. You took us out the wrong bloody exit. We’ve got to go back in and go to the other end of the mall.”

“Or we can just walk around the building,” Ben says, letting me go. “It’s nice. I’m jet lagged. Fresh air will do me good.”

“Oh. Sorry!” 

I’d totally forgot about jet lag. 

“It’s fine. Shall we?”

Ben offers me his arm, which I take and we start around the stupid mall to where I parked the car on the other side. It’d be faster to walk through the stupid hellhole, but it is kind of nice to walk outside in the early evening summer air. 

* * *

We get home passed dinnertime, but Mom made plates for us and shoves them at us the moment we walk in.

“David is mad at you,” is the first thing she says. (Well, after making sure Ben is comfortable, enjoying his dinner, and telling him Basil tried to take out make a break for it when she saw some sort of critter in the backyard this afternoon. Not sure why this is important for Ben to know, but whatever.) 

“Oh, he can go stuff it,” I mutter, stabbing at my mashed potatoes. 

“Well, he was rather colorful in his anger that you’d…ran off with his car,” Mom says. 

“Well, he had the 4Runner!”

When I went to get Ben, I found out Davy had driven the 4Runner to work. I had to take his car, which is actually my mom’s car, today. It was…nice not to drive that stupid monstrosity. 

“Well, he was livid,” Mom says, setting a glass of milk in front of Ben. “You need this.”

Ben blinks and says, “But, I had ice cream.”

My mom stares at Ben, wearing a Mom look. “Ice cream isn’t calcium. It’s sugar.”

He simply nods and drinks his milk. He excuses himself when he’s finished and vanishes. My mom starts talking about something to do with purses, so I entertain her for a moment till I remember to tell her about running into Miranda.

“I thought she’d moved away?” Mom asks, gathering up the dishes and shoving them into the dishwasher. 

“I dunno. I guess I’m going to go make sure Davy picked up his underwear. I think Ben’s kinda tired,” I say, heading to the front of the house. I pause before heading up the stairs when I spot Ben on the front porch, leaning against the railing. I peer through the tiny windows next to the door wondering why the hell he’s outside. It takes me a moment before I notice him raise his hand to his mouth. 

Oh.

He smokes. 

It’d slipped my mind. I’ve seen him in photos with a cigarette in hand, but they are so few and far between, it never actively entered my conscious he smokes.

He doesn’t smell. (Okay, he smells, but he smells good. He’s got the whole I-Wear-Cologne-That-Will-Linger-In-Your-Nose-But-It-Is-Never-Overwhelming down pat.) 

I had a boyfriend in high school who smoked. He smelled like smoke all the time. 

(Even after he dosed himself in cheap cologne.) 

(Maybe that’s Ben’s secret? He doesn’t use the stuff you can get anywhere, but the expensive stuff you have to actual go to a fancy shop to get? I bet it’s from France or something.) (I say France because the BEST perfume I’ve ever worn was made in France and was PRICEY. Then again, it was Balenciaga. Have you seen how much their purses cost?) 

I’ve been with Ben for hours (multiple times) (dude, I’ve been with Ben one on one multiple times!). He clearly isn’t a serious smoker (like pack a day or more), as this is the first time I’ve seen him light up. I read somewhere when he’s filming _Sherlock_ he doesn’t smoke. (Hence why I didn’t see him smoke when I was in the UK. Duh.) The article said it was for the voice (smoking does ruin ones voice I guess), but it might be for the manic edge that lacking nicotine might give him.

Oh, what am I talking about? I’m an idiot. 

Though…

Why do guys look so good smoking? I know it’s gross and unhealthy and will kill him, but I can’t help it…he looks…good.

What is wrong with me? Why can’t I think of any other words? I know lots of words. I make up words, yet I can’t get passed _good_ for a description of Benedict Cumberbatch?

“Rghuhseuh,” I fume, stomping up the stairs.

OoOoOoOoO

* * *

 OoOoOoOoO

_Benedict_

I turn at the noise of someone stomping up the stairs. The house is not very sound proof, or who ever is using the stairs is really trying to be loud.

“DOOR! HOW OLD ARE YOU?” shouts her mum. 

“TEN!” Door shouts back. 

I chuckle quietly. 

I turn back around and survey the neighborhood. It is the ideal and stereotypical suburban American neighborhood. The houses are a mixture styles, but they are all well maintained (home and lawns). There is the faint sound of children playing somewhere and dogs parking off in the distance. (Or closer, as I’m unsure if Basil Bea is joining in the dog chorus. She does adore a good barking.) 

Stubbing out the cigarette on the bottom of my shoe, I wonder what I ought to do with it. I don’t want to take it back into the house with me to bin, but I’m not going to leave it on the ground in the garden her mum painstakingly nurtures in front. Sighing, I open the half empty pack, stick the useless bit in, and shove the pack back into my pocket. 

I really ought to quit. 

I can’t even remember why I started. 

Again.

I give it up when I am working. When I stop working, I start smoking again. 

“Benedict?”

I jump, not having heard the door open behind me. 

“What are you doing out where?” Mrs Judoc asks, peering at me through the screen door. 

I wave my hand around my head, vainly trying to dispel any smoke that might linger. “Oh, nothing.”

She raises an eyebrow at me, but says nothing. 

She knows.

Of course she knows. She’s a mum. They ALWAYS know. 

“Door’s made sure David’s room is in order,” she says as I finally stop waving my hand around my head. “Did you kill it?”

“Pardon?”

“The bug?”

“Oh, er, not sure.”

She raises both eyebrows, looking so much like Door it’s bewildering. (Except for the fact, it’s not as the woman is Door’s mum.)  

“Well, come back inside. Don’t want you to be eaten alive by mosquitos.”

“Do they eat people?”

Mrs Judoc laughs, opening the screen door. I hurry inside, but put distance between us as I’m aware I reek of smoke. 

“MOM!”

“WHAT?”

“STOP IT.”

“I have no idea what you’re alluding to Dorothea,” Mrs Judoc says in a sing song voice up the stairs. “Go on up, Benedict. David is staying at his friend’s while you’re here, so you’ll have his room.”

“Thank you for dinner, Mrs Judoc,” I say, bowing my head.

“Oh, please call me Martha, Benedict,” she insists. 

“Martha,” I correct. I add a smile and the woman beams at me, before shooing me up the stairs. Once up, I head to the only lit room, stopping once I come into an overly pink bedroom.

“This is not your bedroom,” I say, eyeing the flower patterned wallpaper and boarder. Oh, look, there’s white and pink stripes behind the door. And flowered cut-outs near the light switch. 

Dear Lord. 

“Uh, yeah. It is. I reclaimed it!” Door shouts from behind me, pumping her fist into the air. “Davy took it over after I moved out, but I took back the man cave!”

“He had a pink man cave?” I faintly ask.

The room is alarmingly girly. I cannot see it being a man cave at all (even with the oversized telly, state of the art sound system and rather fancy looking futon that reside in the room). 

“Yeah, complete with a pirate flag,” she snickers. “I removed that, as he hung it right over the closet. Couldn’t access my clothes. Also, while that futon might look inviting, it’s got a David’s butt shaped hole on one end. Let me tell you, it’s not nice to wake up in the Gluteus Maximus Indentation.”

I make a noise of understanding, still in shock over the PINK room. 

“You’re down here,” she says, tugging on my sleeve. “Unless you really want to sleep on the air mattress in my dad’s office, which you might. I’ve always thought Davy’s room smelled like feet.”

“Uh…I don’t want to be a bother,” I say, still staring at the frilly…room. 

It is so not Door. It’s too…flowery. Too country. Too…normal. Door’s bold colors— aqua, eggplant, hot pink. And… the flowers are all wrong. 

“I thought you’d have…I don’t know, a more funky childhood room.”

Door snorts. “Have you seen my mother? The rest of the house?”

“Yes, I have,” I say, turning around and following Door back down the hall. 

“She picked the wallpaper and matching carpet. See how it picks up the green in the flowers,” she explains, indicating on the delicate flower pattern where I ought to look. “Since it was hell to wallpaper, it’s never been redone since she put it up when we moved in. I wanted blue flowers when she gave me a choice, but it didn't match the ugly pink bed spreads my grandma had given me at some point. Or something. I don’t remember. I was ten.”

“And now you’re twenty-nine,” I say.

Door nods, turning and exiting the room. I follow her down the hall the way I came to a masculine looking room with a single bed. I quirk an eyebrow at her. 

“He got it before he discovered girls,” Door explains. “Like two weeks. He’s grumped about having a twin bed since. But, it’s extra long because Davy is tall. Or so he says. I don’t get a say in the matter because I’m the shortest.”

I chuckle. Even having only met her mother, I can understand she’d be the shortest. Her mother is a good three inches taller than Door, who is not exactly short. 

“The bathroom’s just behind me. You’ll have to share it with me, but I’m quiet neat compared to Davy. I also do my hair in my room,” Door babbles, looking over her shoulder. She goes into the toilet, which is directly across from the open door of David’s room. She flips the light on. “Towels are here on the vanity, all belonging to you. Uh…I put your suitcase on the chair in there. And, uh…I think that’s it.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I guess if it’s not too much of a bother, I’ll go to bed.”

I am knackered. I’m amazed I’m still awake.

“Sleep, my grasshopper,” Door says in a deep voice, then laughs. “We gotta be outta here by eight, so set an alarm or something. Night.”

She waves and exits. I hear the door down the hall slam shut. 

I look around the room that belongs to a little brother I’ve not met and stare at the various Chicago sport theme items tacked to the walls. I ought to feel more strange about staying in Door’s childhood home, in her brother’s bedroom, but I’m too exhausted to feel much of anything.

* * *

Three days later, my head is a muddled mess still. While I’m used to contracts (I’ve signed a few in my day), I’ve never had to deal with so much minutia as I’ve had to deal with these past three days in starting the label with Door. 

Who knew there was so much paperwork involved in launching a label?

“I’m so glad Davy knows Mitch. We’d be up a creek without him as our business manager,” Door mutters as we stand outside an office building somewhere in suburban business park hell. I’ve no clue where we are other than some sort of business park. We’ve gone to several different business parks in the past three days. Mostly because Door kept getting lost. They all look the same.

“Quite right,” I agree. 

Mitch has been a lifesaver. He knows what he’s doing, while Door and I are two clueless dimbos.  

“I’m exhausted,” Door groans, fishing through her handbag for the keys to the 4Runner. “Who knew opening a business was like going back to school. I’m now glad I didn’t become a lawyer. I knew law school would kill me dead.” 

I eye the white 4Runner parked across the parking lot from where we’re standing on the sidewalk. While I know in America cars are a little bigger and the roads are a tad wider, and yet when in the 4Runner, everything is so small. Other people on the roads must thing the 4Runner is larger than life as well, as I’ve noted people tend to get out of Door’s way when they see her coming. 

“Well, at least we’re up and running,” Door says, finding the keys. “Uh, do you need…”

She trails off, waving her hand at me. I blink at her a moment before I realize what she’s alluding to.

“I’m fine.”

She nods. “I don’t mind, you know. Well, I guess I mind if you smoke around me as I don’t want to die of lung cancer—”

I wince.

“—but other than that, I don’t give two shakes. Whatever you smoke doesn’t smell as bad as weed or…whatever.”

She looks dodgy and walks off before I can inquire what the “whatever” might have been. I follow after her, hands in my pockets, fiddling with my quite crushed pack of cigarettes. I’m conserving. While cigarettes are cheaper here than in London, I learned my lesson a long time ago not to buy them in America. Like tea, they are different.

I really ought to quit. 

 “So, uh…now what?” Door asks, unlocking the 4Runner. “It’s not too hot. We could take Basil Bea for a walk. The Prairie Path is nice and near the house. Basil likes it. I guess it smells good. And if my mom took her for an afternoon walk, she’ll be tired and won’t try to dislocate my arm!”

I chuckle as I get into the car. (We took the dog for a walk the second day I was here and that dog can power walk. I had trouble keeping up with the five year old mutt after Basil attempted to rip Door’s arm out of the socket to investigate some sort of smell on a tree.) 

“I can’t believe we own a business,” I say as she starts the car up. “My head cannot simply wrap around it.”

Door shrugs. “Eh. Tom wants to throw a launch party.”

“A what?”

“Isn’t that what people do when they start fashion lines? Have launch parties?” Door asks me like ought to know all about launch parties for handbag labels. 

I have no idea. 

Even after lessons in law, all the contacts I’ve read and all the other things I’ve done the past three days, I still have no idea what I’m doing. The easiest thing was when I wrote the check to deposit in the business banking account (because you can’t open with a wire transfer or an online deposit or something). 

“No clue. I’ve been to launch parties for things,” I allow. 

“Tom said we should contact Luke.”

“Why would we contact Luke? I have my own publicist.”

“Oh, yeah. Duh,” Door says, throwing the SUV into reverse. “I guess we ought to talk to Mitch too. I forgot to mention it and he didn’t say anything. I mean, who would I invite here? I know…well, my family.”

“Miranda.”

Door snorts. “Yeah, uh, no. I knew the moment I left high school the last time if I never saw a soul from that ditch I’d be fine.”

“Ditch?”

“OMG. I haven’t shown you The Ditch.”

* * *

The ditch turns out to be the secondary school Door attended and she claims it is in a ditch. I can somewhat see what she means, as we did travel down a hill to get to the school. 

“You can see the whole in a ditch thing in the mornings. It’ll be foggy nowhere except around the school,” she explains as we sit the bonnet of the 4Runner in an empty parking lot staring at the tennis courts (which are painted blue for some reason). 

I take a long drag from the cigarette dangling between my fingers. I hold it in a moment before blowing a stream of smoke out of my mouth and allowing the light breeze to take it away from Door. 

“I tried smoking once,” Door randomly proclaims. “I didn’t do it right.”

“Pardon?” I ask, turning to face her.

“Yeah. I did all my teenage rebellion the summer before I started college. I was…I don’t know what I was, but one night I just got into the car and dove to the store and bought a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Because I’m piliated, I love buying cigarettes. I don’t know why. I always wanted to do it. So, one night I just did it. I came home, took the screen out of the bathroom window and smoked. Or puffed.”

Door shakes her head, the pencil straight dark hair cascading over her shoulders. I watch, transfixed.  

“Anyways, I kept up the habit till one night I woke in an utter panic that I was going to die of lung cancer,” she goes on. “Even though I didn’t inhale when I smoked— ha ha ha— I was still exposing myself to second hand smoke each time I lit one, which wasn’t regularly. More often than not, the pack went stale before I finished it. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think I ever finished a pack.”

I drag my eyes off her hair to find her smiling ironically. 

“My pack is getting stale. It’s surprising how little time it takes a pack to stale,” I say. 

“Not an avid smoker, huh?”

“I’m constantly quitting for work,” I explain, turning away from her to take another drag. “It is calming. I get tightly wound. That’s why I started— well, not why I started originally, but why I keep starting after I stop for work.”

“Peer pressure or did you wanna be cool?” 

“I wanted to be cool,” I drawl out, staring at the death stick in my hands. 

“I figured,” Door laughs. “You know, I know it’s gross and it’s horrible for you, but I still think it looks cool. And it annoys me. And I still want to buy packs of cigarettes all the time.”

I chuckle. “Only you, Door, only you.” 

“Yup.”

A few cars drive down the road, but other than that the area is quiet. For some reason the noise from the main road and a near by major thoroughfare don’t reach us in the car park by the blue painted tennis courts. 

Oddly, I feel as if I’m in some sort of angst filled teenage movie. 

“Give me that.”

Door reaches across me and grabs the cigarette from my fingers. She sucks in and blows out before inhaling the smoke into her lungs. I watch the smoke curl out of her mouth utterly bewitched. She stares at the cigarette between her fingers for a moment before handing it back to me.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“Not really.” 

“Hmmm. I doubt you get any of the addictive drugs when you do that,” I comment, before taking one last drag and stubbing out my cigarette on my shoe. I glance around and see a litter bin near the other side of the tennis courts. I slide off the bonnet. I can feel Door’s eyes on me as I walk around to the other side to bin my trash. 

“I played tennis once,” Door calls, sliding off the car with no grace. (Honestly, it’s amazing she didn’t fall on her face.)  

“I cannot see that,” I tell her as I make my way back to the car. 

“I was okay. I never went out for my school’s team. Once because I didn’t know when tryouts were and once because I was grounded.”

“You were grounded?”

“Yeah. I came home late and didn’t answer my cell phone,” Door explains. “I did play for gym on those courts. It was during my ‘dude’ phase.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said ‘dude’ ever other word. And sometimes in place of other words,” she grins. “Let’s go. This walk down memory lane was fun, but still hate the place.”

Door gets back into the 4Runner. I stare at the building for a moment. It’s a very typical American high school building— built during the crush of the Baby Boom and later expanded, thus its varying styles of architecture. It’s hard to imagine Door at this place. I cannot see her exiting the school, playing tennis on the blue courts or seeing her anywhere on the grounds. It’s impossible to picture Door and Miranda getting along with one another as friends and walking through the hallways, passed the classrooms with walls of windows. 

It must have been distracting on nice days to sit in class with the view of all the green fields that surround the ugly building. 

The Ditch (as Door keeps calling it) is completely different from where I spent my formative years. Not only in architecture, but she did not _live_ here as I lived at Harrow. And yet, her years influenced her in similar ways mine at Harrow shaped me. 

I turn away from the school (and my deep thoughts) and find Door waiting for me to join in her in a car her ex-husband is allowing her to have out of the goodness of his heart (or guilt). 

Door waves at me. 

I wave at her. 

She rolls her eyes and taps her watch. 

Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I head for the car. I get into the car and Door starts it up. She stares at the building, leaning forward on the steering wheel.

“I hate it here,” she admits. “And not just because I hated high school.” She quietly observes the ugly building before she continues. “This is the suburban nightmare people write books about— the whole nine yards. There were cliques, fights, battles, strange teachers, misunderstandings and a whole host of other things that if I wanted, I could turn out several young adult books filled with angst and strife.”

She leans back and looks blank. She throws the car into reverse.

“I hate it here. I hate being here. I don’t want to be here, Ben.” 

I give her a look of concern as she turns to back out. 

“Everyone likes going home. Home changes, you know, as you grow up.”

I nod, as my home has changed several times since I moved out of my parent’s home. And yet…

“But there’s always somewhere that is your first home, you know? Usually, it’s your parent’s house, where you grew up. I don’t feel at home in my parent’s home. I don’t fit there, I don’t belong there. Do you understand?”

I really don’t.

“I lost what I marked as home,” Door goes on without bothering to wait for me to answer. “I lost him a long time ago. I’ve been homeless for years and only realized it on the floor of your hotel room in Cardiff. Since then…”

Door snorts bitterly, looking both ways before turning out of the parking lot. 

“You’re homeless?”

“Yeah. I’ve been borderline miserable since I was twenty-one.” 

I frown. “You’re always miserable?”

“Miserable is the wrong word. I’ve been content for the last six years. Some days are better than others, but I’ve lost that pseudo-content feeling since I realized I’m, well, homeless. Home is where the heart is.”

“And you lost your heart,” I whisper and Door gives me a rather sad smile as she comes to a stop at a stop sign. 

“ _I’ve lost myself, there’s nothing left. It’s all gone_ ,” she sings softly. She flicks the single to turn left and finishes the line as she turns the car, “ _Deep inside of you…”_

I feel incredibly sad. 

OoOoOoOoO

* * *

OoOoOoOoO

_Dorothea_

Having successfully rained on any parade we might had had at triumphantly opening up Door & Benedict, I take Ben to the historical Dairy Queen in Lombard that night after dinner to make up on my teenage angst moment. We get there before the baseball/soccer/softball/whatever sport you play in the summer in Lombard/Villa Park crowd arrives. 

Ben loves Dairy Queen. 

The moment I suggest it after dinner, his eyes lit up like a kid’s. It’s so clear to anyone he’s excited, my FATHER even noticed. (And he never notices anything. I’m pretty sure I could dye my hair bright green and he’d fail to notice.) 

Because I’m no longer raining on parades, I allow Basil to join us since Ben wanted to bring her with us. (Basil Bea likes Ben. She only barked at him when he came into the house and that was only because she REMEMBERED him and was excited to see him.) (Unlike when she barked at Tom for hours. She hates Tom Hiddleson. Traitor dog.) 

“Why did I let you convince me to bring this Menace to Society?” I ask as the dog whines and whimpers at the various people who have shown up to get ice cream tonight. “Let’s go over to the park.”

“There’s a park around here?” Ben asks, greedily eyeing the Blizzard in his hands.

He’s never had one and about had a conniption when I explained what it was. I don’t know what kind he got, but it’s filled with crap.

“Yeah, over yonder,” I say, jerking my head in the direction of Lilacia Park. “It’ll lack it’s namesake flower, as those aren’t in bloom any longer, but it’s still nice. We used to go to church in the park in the summers.”

“Now where do you go?”

“Nowhere,” I reply. “We used to attend that one.”

I point across the street with my hand holding my hot fudge and marshmallow shake, as the other hand has got Basil the Whimper Will’s leash. 

Ben blinks at the building across the street. “And you no longer do?”

“I think my mom sometimes goes, but Davy and my dad haven’t gone since I started college. Church politics. Come on, this way.” 

Ben blindly follows me across the street and the few blocks to the park. I babble on about the park is known for: lilacs. I tell him about how in the spring when they are blooming, the whole downtown of Lombard smells of lilacs. I share the stories my dad used to tell me when I was a kid about him getting off the train and being overpowered by the smell. (We lived in Lombard till I was ten and we moved to Villa Park.) 

We wander through the park with our melting ice cream till Ben sits down on a bench off the path and near the open space where the church would hold its Sunday services in the park. (They might still do it. I don’t know. I haven’t lived here in six years.) 

“You can almost forget you’re in suburbia whilst here,” Ben comments, digging into his melting cup of ice cream. 

I nod, waiting to be hit with that wave of melancholy that’s been haunting me since I got back from London. No where has felt familiar, no where has had that _home_ feeling I desperately wish it had. 

It doesn’t come. 

In fact, for the first time since I realized I was homeless, I don’t feel lost. 

I feel content. 

“Ouch. Basil!”

Basil just tried to take my arm off to get at another dog waking on a nearby path. 

Ben takes the leash from me, chucking his cup into a near by trashcan. He smiles at me, offering me his hand. 

“Are you okay?”

I nod, taking his hand. 

He doesn’t let go, pulling me towards the path where Basil the Tugapotamus is jonesing to go. Ben starts talking. I’m not sure what he is saying, as his voice is soothing and dulling the noise Basil is making in her quest to be the worst dog in the world. (Okay, not the worst. She’s rather well behaved for an idiot.) I’m not sure how far we’ve walked through the park (it’s not big, but we’ve looped a few times) before I realize I’m holding Benedict Cumberbatch’s hand. Like seriously holding his hand. Not just my hand in his, clasped together innocently. There is finger weaving going on here.

Why am I holding his hand?

Why is this not a problem?

It should be a problem, right? 

I can’t remember the last time I held someone’s hand. I would guess it was Jason, the last time I forced him to take my hand. Jason didn’t like hand holding. All the couples we hung out with held hands while walking places, but he never could hold my hand for more then five-seconds before he’d break free. 

Ben is holding my hand. 

And I feel…

I feel at home. 

Oh…frack with a cherry on top.

Ben is home. 

Freaking Benedict Cumberbatch is **_home_**.

Oh, dear me. 

I shouldn’t be surprised.

* * *

Ben’s days in Villa Park go by quickly after we square away all Benedict & Door business. He’s in Greece now being all fluffy haired and tan. (He tans easily. How is this fair? I thought he was a ginger. WE do not TAN.) 

And I am here, in Villa Park once again feeling void, empty, and lost. 

Ben is home, my home. 

Well…frack me.

Ben is home. My friend, Benedict Cumberbatch, gives me that content, fuzzy feeling of home. He goes away and I feel…well, like I’ve felt pretty much since I feel in love with Chris all those moons ago and then he went back to New Zealand. 

I did not fall in love with Ben. Right? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I don’t love him. I like him. I find him attractive, but he’s my FRIEND. He is my male friend. And now business partner. 

I let out a frustrated noise and bang my head on the table I’m seated at in the basement. Mom and I have turned our unfinished basement into purse making central and I’m getting cracking now that Mitch and Davy have the website up and running. 

Well, when I say cracking…

“Door, why are you banging your head against the table?”

“It seemed like the thing to do,” I mutter, lifting my head to see my mom sitting down across from me at her sewing machine. “Am I crazy?”

“Of course you are, honey,” Mom assures. “Do you need to see a doctor for it? Now, that is a question I’ve been asking myself since you learned to talk.”

I give her a dirty look, push out all thoughts of Ben and home from my mind and get to work. I’ve got purse to make.


End file.
